Stolen Car Turns Up In Clay Pit

MONTVERDE — It's a staple of movies and television: the bad guys shove a car off a cliff and then hightail it after the crushed and battered hulk is left resting on a canyon floor.

It happened for real this week in Lake County to a 1990 Honda Civic owned by Jeffrey W. Merrill of Altamonte Springs.

The car had been stolen late Tuesday or early Wednesday while parked off Orange Blossom Trail in Orange County, Merrill said Friday.

A Lake deputy sheriff patrolling late Thursday on Black Still Lake Road south of Montverde, near Florida's Turnpike, saw the car at the bottom of a clay pit. The car had been pushed over a 25-foot ledge, reports said.

The car was upside down, with broken windows and minus its radio and speakers. The keys were in the ignition.

Merrill said he left his wallet, containing about $20, in the car. That, too, was missing, but he said he did receive his driver's license in the mail. He figured whoever stole the car tossed it out the window.

Early Friday, the car was towed to a storage area in Minneola. Merrill, 27, said he had a gut feeling the car would be found.

''I'm probably going to laugh or cry when I see it,'' he said.

2 jail inmates sue alleging bad treatment

Two inmates at the Lake County Jail have sued their corrections officers, saying harsh treatment in jail has violated their civil rights.

Alan Watkins and Jerry Valadez filed the suit against Officers Tracy Turner and Robert Fisher. Watkins asks for $50,000 in damages, while Valadez requests $10,000.

In the suit, Watkins - a 31-year-old Mascotte man in jail for violating his probation - complains that he was treated unfairly during a July 14 incident when he got into an argument with Turner and asked to see a jail supervisor.

Turner refused his request and ordered him back into his cell, prompting him to climb on a stool to step around her, he wrote.

Turner pulled him off the stool and wrestled him down, at which point Fisher came into the room and grabbed him by the ankles, he wrote.

The handwritten suit also mentions Valadez's complaint. The 23-year-old Mascotte man is awaiting trial on charges of sexual battery.